by Helena Shaw
Though part of her, the rational part that only believed what she could see with her own two eyes, insisted she needed to stop being so foolish. There was no denying what she’d seen. Even days later, the memory of what almost killed her was fresh and alive, haunting her every time she closed her eyes.
“Barkeep!” one of the hunters who had stumbled into the bar well before most called to her. “Another round for me and my pals, here.”
Dawn couldn’t hide the roll of her eyes as she pushed herself off the bar to fetch a pitcher for them, but Jim stopped her.
“I’ll handle it,” he said.
“It’s fine,” she insisted. She’d been dealing with the lot of them for days and was used to them by now. Of course, most of them were sane, thirsty men, but a few days without bagging what they were hunting had turned some of them a little squirrelly. With a few beers in them, they were starting to take out their frustrations on each other, and on the bar.
“Dawnie,” Jim said in a hushed tone while he moved his bulk between her and the exit of the bar. “I’ve got it. Why don’t you go see if Gabe needs a hand in the bar?”
“Fine,” she sighed as she pushed past him and through the galley doors.
“Hey, Dawn,” Gabe said as he looked up from the giant bowl of ground beef he was turning into hamburger.
“Hey,” she sighed as she plopped herself down on a bent chair in the corner.
“Jim tell you I needed a hand?” Gabe asked. That had always been Jim’s code for “there’s a rowdy patron and he’s getting a little rough with the girls,” and tonight was turning out no different.
“Yeah,” she said as she watched him work. Gabe didn’t have bulging muscles like Gavin Mosley, or the lean, supple biceps of Jase, but his meaty arms were good for working the meat. They’d gone through so much hamburger the last few days that Jim had placed an emergency order for more. If tonight went as expected, they were sure to go through all of what Gabe had prepared.
“Any word on if they caught it yet?” he asked.
“Nope,” Dawn sighed. It was all anyone was talking about lately, and somehow the mysterious wolf or bear, or whatever everyone thought it was now had everyone’s attention. No one asked about Courtney anymore, or any of the other missing hikers. The animal that had killed them was the star of the show, even if no one but she and Jase knew exactly what that animal was.
“Oh, cheer up,” Gabe said as he tossed a small chunk of meat at Dawn’s cheek. His aim was good, but her reflexes were faster and she easily swatted it away. With a sick, wet thuck, it hit the kitchen floor where she let it stay.
“Why should I?” she asked, her own anger at the situation bubbling up. “My best friend is missing, I’m constantly harassed by the idiots who are drinking at the bar, Jim is keeping me hidden back here for my own safety, but it means losing my tips. What do I have to be cheerful about?”
“Well,” Gabe said, his hands stopping. “How about having a boss who cares about you, a coworker who was just kidding around with you, and the fact that eventually, those idiots out there are going to kill that bear?”
“Sorry,” Dawn said sheepishly. She was wrong to take her frustrations out on Gabe. He was only trying to help, but she didn’t want to hear it. He did have a point, though.
“Besides, what happened with that ball player who was here the other night, Mosley-whatever?” he asked.
“Gavin?” she replied. “What about him?”
“Well, other night,” Gabe said as he returned to the meat. “You two just seemed to be getting pretty friendly, is all.”
“What of it?” Dawn asked.
“I just thought maybe he was, you know, rattling your cage a bit,” Gabe laughed. “You could probably use a little fun.”
“Excuse me?” Dawn shot back. “I can’t have a conversation with someone without being accused of sleeping with him?”
“It’s not that,” Gabe said with an exasperated sigh. “Five days ago, you wanted to flay that guy, and then the other night, you were talking to him like you were best friends. I guess I just thought it was all sexual tension and you were chummy after blowing off some steam.”
“Gross,” Dawn said with a shake of her head. “No thanks. Just because I was probably wrong about him hurting Courtney doesn’t mean I want to sleep with him.”
“Ah, I get it,” Gabe said as he began to scoop out the meat and shape it into patties. “It’s not him that rattled you, it’s the other one. That slick FBI agent, the young one. He’s the one who’s got you all riled up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dawn said, but she could feel the blood warming her cheeks. The blush was there, and a glance in her direction gave Gabe all the information he needed.
“I knew it had to be someone,” Gabe said with a smile. “Oh, don’t be embarrassed. Even I can see why you’d do the down and dirty with a guy like him. What’s his name again?”
“Ja—” Dawn began, but stopped herself. “Just... just Kevin.”
“Just Kevin?” Gabe said with a laugh. “Like Cher? No last name?”
“Kevin Nash,” Dawn said as she forced herself to remain aloof. “And so what if I did... that with him?”
“Nothing to me.” Gabe shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Like I said, you could use a little fun. And you deserve it.”
“Thanks,” Dawn said, though his confidence in her made her squirm.
“So, are you two dating now?” he asked her. “Are we going to lose you to his charms? You going to follow him back to the big city?”
“No,” Dawn said, her embarrassment beginning to return.
“Ah, I get it,” Gabe said. “Hasn’t called, has he?”
“So what if he hasn’t?” Dawn asked as her eyes narrowed. “Why should I care?”
“I’m not saying you should,” Gabe said. “But I can tell it’s bothering you. I know with everything else going on, it’s understandable that you’ve been a little… well… bitchy lately.”
“Sorry,” Dawn spit at him.
“Don’t be,” Gabe assured her. “I get it, and we’ve all been there. I just have one question for you.”
“And that is?” Dawn asked, venom on her tongue.
“Have you called him?” Gabe asked. “Not to be nosey, but before me and my wife got married, I almost ended it because she never called me. I thought she never wanted me around, and breaking up was what she was hoping for. I full-on said it was over because I thought she didn’t love me, but really, she just thought the boy was supposed to call the girl. Outdated and stupid, that’s what that was. It was my fault for not telling her sooner that I wanted her to call me as much as I called her, and it was her fault for thinking she needed to be some damsel in distress and have me always calling on her. Now she runs the show, and I couldn’t be happier.”
“Maybe,” Dawn mumbled.
“Maybe what?” Gabe asked.
“Maybe I haven’t called him, either,” she sighed. “I guess I just figured he was busy and he’d call me when he had time. But it’s been three days, and I haven’t heard from him.”
“So?” Gabe asked. “Not for nothing, but he might be waiting on you. Men are just as shy as you ladies. You just don’t realize it.”
She knew he had a point, but her pride kept her from admitting it. As much as a part of her wanted Jase to be the one to call her, to tell him how much he wanted her, she had to accept that maybe she needed to be the one to reach out and contact him.
“I’ll be right back,” she said as she pushed herself up from the chair.
Dawn had placed laundry on the back burner for some time, and she was still wearing the same torn-up jeans as she had been all week. Though the scrapes on her arm and knees had begun to heal, the holes in the jeans would need mending before the snow started to fall.
The only real benefit to not remembering to wash her clothes was that the crumpled-up business card in her pocket was still there.
The paper had thinned co
nsiderably from its time rubbing inside her jeans, but Jase’s fake business card had managed to survive. The writing had faded some and the paper was so creased that it was hard to read, but the number was still there, and Dawn reached for Jim’s phone as she stepped into his office.
The last time she’d called the number he’d given her, he’d picked up almost immediately. A part of her believed that the same would hold true again, but instead, the phone only rang and rang.
“Come on,” she mumbled to the phone as she waited. “Come on.”
The longer the phone rang, the bigger the hurt in Dawn’s pride grew. She had expected him to pick up on the first ring, to tell her how glad he was that she had called and that he wanted to see her. While she’d dialed, she imagined him hauling ass to the bar and joining her for a drink, but with each ring, that fantasy turned to something darker.
By the fifth ring, she pictured him staring at his phone, seeing it ring and somehow knowing it was her, even as she called from Jim’s. She could see the look of apprehension on his face so clearly that it was almost real.
Finally, a voice broke through the dial tone. It shocked Dawn right out of her foreboding fantasy, and she stuttered to figure out what to say, only to realize that it wasn’t Jase answering her, but his voicemail.
“Hey,” Jase’s smooth, rich voice greeted her so casually that she swore he was really there. “If this is an emergency, call Seth. If this is in regards to Hattiesburg, you’ve got the wrong guy. For everything else, leave a message.”
With that, the phone beeped in Dawn’s ear. His voicemail was strange, vague at best, and she had no idea what to make of it. She didn’t know anyone named Seth, and she’d never been to Hattiesburg. Her best bet was the leave a message, but she had no idea what to say.
“Um,” she mumbled into the phone, but just as she was about to sort herself out and come up with something dry, witty, and breezy to say, a clamor came from the bar. Frantic voices filled the building, and Dawn nearly forgot all about the phone call.
Curiosity overwhelmed her, and she dropped the phone back on its cradle before she moved back to the kitchen.
“What was that?” she asked Gabe, but he had the same confused look on his face as she did. He was in the middle of cooking up burgers and trapped behind the stove. She could see he was wondering if it was worth letting the burgers burn to find out the cause of the commotion, but she refused to wait to see if he made a choice. The yelling from the bar was only getting louder, and she had to know what the source of it was.
“Holy shit, we gotta go,” one of the hunters was screaming at another. “It could still be out there!”
“Are you nuts? We’ve got to get Clyde to the hospital,” someone else yelled back.
“Where is he?” someone else was yelling. “You didn’t just leave him out there, did you?”
“What is going on?” Dawn asked as she pulled Jim aside.
“They spotted the bear,” Jim said to her, trying to keep his voice low enough that no one heard them. “Although some of the guys said it was a wolf. They couldn’t tell in the dark.”
“Okay?” Dawn asked, still unsure what that meant.
“One of them got bit, apparently,” Jim said, though he didn’t seem too concerned. Dawn, on the other hand, felt her stomach drop. Though a small part of her was scared to believe that monsters could actually be real, she knew exactly what it meant if someone got bit by the werewolf. They would change, and that meant that Goosemont would be dealing with two werewolves instead of one.
“Did they shoot it?” she asked him.
“I don’t think so,” Jim said. “Sounds like they’re fighting over who is going to get the guy who was bitten and take him to the hospital, and who is going to go tracking the wolf, or bear, or whatever it was.”
If you only knew, Dawn thought to herself.
“What’s going on?” Gabe asked as he stepped out of the kitchen. His forearms were still covered in ground beef, but he was too curious about what was going on to even notice.
“One of the idiots in the woods got bit,” Dawn whispered, careful not to say it loud enough for anyone else to hear. The last thing she needed was someone having it out for her over an off-the-cuff remark.
“Maybe we shouldn’t let them go out,” Gabe said. “The ones that have been drinking, that is.”
“They’ve all been drinking,” Jim sighed. “Not much we can do about it, save wait ‘til one of them shoots themselves, or worse. I just hope they bring down that beast before it gets that bad.”
“They will,” Gabe said, though he was speaking a little louder now. No one was listening to them. They were too busy fighting amongst themselves to even notice the three employees as they stood back and watched.
Even Dawn was too busy with her own thoughts to keep up with the conversation the hunters were having all around her. All she could think about was what would happen to the man who’d been bitten.
Maybe I should call Jase back, she wondered, just to let him know what’s happened in the woods.
If what she had learned from scary movies held true, she knew there was only one way to deal with the man who’d been bit. Someone would have to drive something silver through his heart, whether it be a bullet or a blade, and she just knew that Jase would probably be the man to do it.
No, she remembered. There might be another way.
Some movies, like the goofy sequel to An American Werewolf in London, said if you killed the head of the werewolf bloodline, any people he turned would be free of the curse. Whether that was true or not, Dawn didn’t know. She didn’t even really have a way to know for sure that a bite meant the man would turn at all, but somehow that part seemed all too true. It was in all the lore, all the legends. For it to be fake seemed more impossible than the actual existence of monsters.
Finally, it seemed a decision had been made. The arguing between the men seemed to be dying down some.
“He doesn’t need an army to get to the hospital,” one of the guys said, just about the only one without his cheeks flushed red with anger. “Me and Merle will take him down to county. The rest of you find that bear and shoot it for me.”
“Fine,” someone said. “Just don’t go changing yer mind once we get out there.”
Mercifully, despite the chaos, Dawn watched as men threw cash on the tables before they started to leave the bar. She could tell by the way Jim’s nose whistled as he let out a sigh of relief that he was worried about the exact same thing. Even though the bar hadn’t been as busy as it had during the first couple days since the hunters arrived, it would still be a lot of cash to lose out on if they took off running.
With their tabs mostly paid, Dawn moved around the front of the bar to watch them depart. She was getting used to the line of trucks lined up in front of the bar each night, but for some reason she wanted—no, needed—to see them drive away in search of the monster in the woods.
Cold wind blew through the open door, and Dawn shivered hard against it, but she didn’t bother with her coat. Goosebumps rose on her arms, even though she was still wearing long sleeves to cover her bruises and scrapes. The less questions she needed to answer, the better.
The trucks that the hunters had rolled into town in ran the gamut from rusted old junkers to brand new behemoths with hemi engines and four-wheel drive. Some of them were antiques, and some of them were shiny and new, but there was one truck that caught her eye as the vehicles began to back out of their spots.
It was a truck she’d seen once before, but only in passing. An older model, for sure, burgundy with a thick white stripe around the middle and a Ford logo on the front. The truck sat idling as it waited for the others to back out of their spaces.
It was only when all the other vehicles started out down the road that the red and white truck began to follow. Unlike the others, tearing by at breakneck speeds, the last truck in the line went slower, careful and deliberate.
When the truck slowly rolled by the fron
t door, Dawn saw why. It was no hunter, no ordinary one, at least, that was behind the wheel. With only the light from Jim’s bar and the yellow-orange moon above to illuminate him, Dawn locked eyes with Jase as his truck rolled by the front door.
She wanted to call out to him, to storm after him and demand to know where he’d been, but she never got the chance. His bright green eyes broke their hold on her own, and he turned away from her, visibly sighing as he did.
Before she could realize just what had happened, Jase’s truck lurched forward and picked up speed, joining the queue of trucks as they made for the woods.
Chapter Twelve
With the commotion in the woods, Jim’s had cleared out early, and after an hour, it had become quite apparent no one else was coming in. Though nine was still early for a bar, Jim sent Dawn home for the night.
For once, she was glad to be home by herself. Seeing the way Jase had looked at her from the truck had sent her stomach crashing to her knees. Normally, she liked the distractions Jim’s provided, but with nothing to do except listen to his remarks about how she and Gabe were drinking him to the poorhouse each night, she was glad to be home.
At first, she was mostly just relieved to see he was even still alive, but as she’d walked home, her relief turned into apprehension, and then anger. She had been worried about him, honestly worried, and he hadn’t even bothered to let her know that he hadn’t been eaten by some horrible creature. Worse still, she worried he regretted their night together.
Don’t you regret it? her mind asked as she unlocked the door to her cozy little home.
Part of her had thought that she did, a noisy part that told her sleeping with him had been a mistake, but she couldn’t bring herself to really listen to that angry little voice. Jase was like no lover she’d ever had, not that she’d had many. He was passionate, animalistic, rough, and yet surprisingly gentle as he took her. There was no way she could regret spending the night with a lover like him.
Once inside, Dawn was about to reach for the bottle of whiskey that had taken up residence on her kitchen counter, its contents now surprisingly low, but she stopped herself. Instead, she moved toward the bathroom and finally unboxed the bottle of blonde hair dye she’d bought almost a week ago.